Origin of the Brunists

by Robert Coover

  Willie and Mabel Hall came over, disrupting the boy’s monologue. Marcella excused herself, left the room. “Well, as the Good Book says,” said Willie Hall, “‘the poor has good tidings preached to them!’” Hall looked at no one when he spoke, just gazed off and let fly.

  “You know the Bible well?” Miller asked.

  “And ‘somethin’ greater than the temple is here!’“

  Mabel Hall, though not too big, outweighed her husband by a good thirty pounds and had a couple inches on him, but Miller’s first-sight estimate of her as the muscled tyrant proved far from the case. She was as submissive as Willie was impulsive, as mute and secretive as he was loquacious.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hall, but what do you think is going to—?”

  “As the Good Book says, Mr. Miller, ‘in malice be ye babes, but in mind be men!’ And ‘many are called, but few are chosen’!”

  It was useless, so Miller gave it up.

  “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong—” Marcella came in and announced that refreshments were ready. She smiled over at Miller, and he winked in return. Everyone stood and moved with polite gestures toward the dining room, sweeping Marcella in ahead of them. All but Giovanni, of course: he watched them exit, expressionless. His eyes were what you noticed: glittering, black, restless, the flesh around them sunken, making them seem to protrude abnormally.

  Miller held back, let the others go ahead, and he saw, as he’d more or less anticipated, that Eleanor Norton was also delaying, fussing with her logbooks. When the others had filed into the dining room, she approached him. “I saw you were talking with Mrs. Collins.”

  “Yes, for a moment. I must say, she seems very impressed by you. She says you have been a great inspiration to her.”

  Mrs. Norton sighed, absently rubbed a small medallion that hung from her neck on a chain. “She’s a sincere woman, Mr. Miller, but … a frightful amateur.” She smiled up at him, accepting the sympathetic smile he returned her. “Tell me,” she continued without transition, “do you believe in communication with spiritual beings at higher levels?”

  Marcella had explained enough of what had happened until now to prepare him somewhat for tonight’s experience, and he had even half expected this woman’s very question, yet when she put it directly to him, he discovered he didn’t have an answer for it. He reached again for his cigarettes, checked himself just in time. Chatter trickled in irrelevantly from the dining room. Giovanni looked on from his bed. “It’s a subject,” he managed finally, “in which I have long had a serious interest, Mrs. Norton.”

  “Good,” she said simply, apparently accepting that, lame as it was. “Oh dear, we really have so much to do!” She focused on some great distance, sighed. “I do hope we shall be ready!”

  He ventured: “For what, Mrs. Norton?” All he had picked up so far was that she claimed to be able to receive messages, through writing and sometimes, in emergencies, through her voice, from superior spirits, spirits at what she called “higher aspects of intensity,” and that now she had reached the seventh such aspect, perhaps the last, whence she received periodic communiqués from a teacher known to her as “Domiron.” This Domiron presumably existed, not exactly in a different place or a different stellar system, but somehow in this same space, but at a different density level, as though his atoms were lighter or something.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly, after a pause. “I hope …” But her voice trailed off. She glanced at her watch, and he instinctively checked his: 8:50. “Mr. Miller?” She looked up at him. He guessed her eyes to be gray or gray-blue, though in this dull flickering light he couldn’t tell for sure. But they had that faded, indistinct, introspective quality of gray eyes. “Do you believe that Giovanni Bruno was miraculously rescued from the coalmine disaster?”

  “Yes, I do.” No more hesitations, boy.

  “I don’t.”

  “Really? But—”

  “I am convinced, Mr. Miller—more than that: I have received specific information on the matter—Giovanni Bruno perished in that mine disaster!”

  What could he say? From over her small graying head, Giovanni Bruno’s eyes shone at them, as though … as though he were assenting, inciting her. “But then, how—?”

  “His own mother has confirmed it. She said she saw him dead. And everyone has agreed on one thing: that this is a very different man now from the one they all knew as Giovanni Bruno.”

  “Then you think—?”

  “Not think, Mr. Miller! This kind of insight is never achieved by thinking!” She seemed suddenly angry. He realized that, for all her modest manner, there was something ever seething underneath. She frowned, as a mother might at a forgetful child, then continued matter-of-factly: “Giovanni Bruno died and his body is now inhabited by a superior being. This is the meaning of the … the vision of the white bird.”

  At a loss, he replied, “I see,” and then, in the ensuing silence, added, “Well, I’m certainly learning a great deal!”

  She assented. “We all have much to learn,” she said.

  “And Mrs. Collins?”

  A barely perceptible little sigh of exasperation, a pause. “We felt extremely fortunate that Mrs. Collins joined us three weeks ago. There is every reason to believe that the … the being, let us say, the being now struggling to establish communication with us through … through the body and person of Giovanni Bruno”—a thoughtful hesitation, a brief glance Bruno’s way—“might originally have intended to utilize Mrs. Collins’ husband.”

  “But why do you think—?”

  “The … the condition …”

  “Ah. And does Mrs. Collins herself …”

  Again the impatient sigh. “Grasp it? I don’t know, Mr. Miller. I hope so. But she is slow to learn, is overemotional and impulsive. And she is too hemmed in, I am afraid, by her own … her own prejudices, if I may so speak.”

  “Her Christianity.”

  “Yes. I have had to employ all the frightfully dull simplifications and bumbling writings to which she is accustomed in order even to communicate—I hope I don’t offend you …?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Righteousness and salvation, the so-called Second Coming, the terribly overworked parable of the Cross, angels and devils and sin—sin! Good heavens! Finally, Mr. Miller, we are all of us emanations of the world soul, are we not? Ultimately we all partake, like it or not, in what is commonly called the divine, and the only conceivable sin in such a case is to be willfully ignorant of one’s proper condition. Isn’t that so?”

  He assented, remarking privately that that was not unlike the line by which he often made out with the reluctant.

  “But what can I do? And I simply cannot share—that is, we cannot share—her morbid expectations. I admit, it is possible, at least another thing somewhat like the disaster she expects is possible, but, well, there is a logic to everything, Mr. Miller, even the irrational, don’t you think?”

  “By all means.”

  “I have received no single message to confirm such an extreme interpretation, though it is true, there have been hints implying something of cosmic importance….” She gazed off, her mind momentarily elsewhere, bit her lip. She seldom let go her grip on the medallion. “Mr. Miller, I cannot believe that my … my sources …”

  “Domiron, I think you—”

  “Why, yes! How did you know?”

  He perceived an answer that would really bowl her over, but he passed it by. “Marcella mentioned …”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.” She looked up at Miller, her schoolmistress sternness melting for a moment. “She’s a truly marvelous pupil, so kind and sincere, the finest in all my years as … as a teacher. We’re deeply fond of her, Wylie and I. And she is making such extraordinary progress!”

  Inwardly, he frowned at that but said, “She’s a wonderful girl.”

  “Yes, yes, she is.” Fadeout again.

  “Mrs. Norton, I’d like to arrange for, sometime at you
r convenience, of course, some private instruction, too, if I may.”

  “Of course, Mr. Miller,” she said, then added gravely, “It is my duty for those who ask.” She cast a glance toward Bruno, then turned to enter the dining room.

  “Oh, and Mrs. Norton, what do you think, what do you believe Giovanni Bruno—or the voice within him—meant by ‘the coming of light’?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, looking at him quizzically. “But we shall know tonight. Shouldn’t we go in? I’m afraid there’ll be no cake for us.”

  The coming of light! Do none of them perceive it so well as she? So plain! Her knife licks into the cake, his cake, light dances on the blade, on the frosting’s glaze, spoons reflect it, eyes sparkle with it, light decorates her laughter, her motions flow in it. Are not their pasts so shadowed as hers? Does not a storm blow through their present? Do not their morrows flash with promise? Is not this very room bursting with light? Are they blind? Are they all so old? Need they their terrors? Must they distort it? Oh, come! she cries. Yes, there is plenty for all! for seconds! take more! Gaily, she serves, pours, helps, hands, gives … gives!

  Around the table a cheerful tumble of voices, forks clicking plates, compliments on the cake, modest pasts in halting revelation, the boys talking basketball and animal care with Wylie Norton: could be a party anywhere. Willie Hall, his jaws in motion as always, but now with cake damming the sound, listened, eyes asquint, to Eleanor Norton. Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Hall sat fatly on chairs, overlapping the edges, nibbling at the cake, Mrs. Hall whispering furtively into Mrs. Wilson’s ear. Miller located Marcella behind the broad shoulders of Clara Collins, delivering cake to Elaine. He maneuvered so as to catch her eye, showed her his empty hands. She smiled, stretched over the dining room table, starched blouse snapping taut, under the yellow—almost amber—glow of the chandelier, sliced him a wide wedge, laid it neatly on a plate. He knew it was unwarranted, but he couldn’t rid his mind of the idea she had baked the cake especially for him. Anyway, why not think of it that way? Watching her was a feast in itself. More than anything, it was her poise, her unfailing delicacy of movement, her radiance, open smiles, frank gazes, all without visible effort, operating on some internal principle of—well, he was tempted to say Joy. But maybe that was merely an instance of transference. Certainly he felt like blowing the goddamn roof off. She brought him the cake and a cup of coffee. “I don’t suppose you take cream or sugar.”

  “No.” He smiled, a little surprised at the way she’d said it. He could hear some thin music trickling in from the television. He motioned toward it. “We can’t escape it, should we join it?” Wanted it to sound natural, but it didn’t: could almost feel the goddamn whiskers sprouting and bristling. He expected the worst.

  But she smiled and said, “Okay. Let me get some coffee.”

  In the darkened living room, they leaned back against a wall, just inside the door to the dining room, facing the television set. Her father sagged in his chair between them and the screen, his back more or less to them, snorted restlessly from time to time, ran his old white hands trembling through his thinning hair. There was no bandage on his nose tonight, and the large sores showed black when they caught the bluish-white glare of the television.

  Miller, sipping coffee, looked down at the clasp on Marcella’s head. He couldn’t distinguish the outlines of the televised picture exactly, but the motion of the screen was reflected in it. Nervous back-and-forth twitches of light. Her hair had a fresh smell that reminded him vaguely of some distant event, something beyond his mere recollections, some fragrant imprecise time he had possibly never really known. A lock of her hair had come loose from the clasp, arched out now over her smooth forehead. She looked up and, not smiling, held his gaze. He lowered the cup. A strange thought intruded and he wondered where it came from and if it were truly a thought or already an irrevocable decision. She had large wideset sensitive eyes, he knew them to be brown, a small fine-boned—and, in sudden need, their mouths drew together, he felt her warm breath flickering over his lips just before they touched hers—and it was only a touch, a brush: plain unskilled reception, and he thought, I’m the first to come here! She held his gaze as he leaned away and they were both still for a moment. Then she smiled. Her smile broke the last bolts. He watched her dancing through his once-gloomy house.

  “Here,” she whispered, and took the plate out of his hand, set it on a table a few feet away, put her cup there, too, returned to his side. She took his free hand, clasped it firmly but not in ownership exactly, a kind of eager gratitude, affirmation, and she leaned against him. He knelt, set the cup on the floor, lifted his eyes the full length of her young body, all those subtle curves of thigh and belly, and as he rose to—he thought coolly—enrich her experience, the doorbell sounded. He started, and she laughed gaily. “Excuse me,” she said, and her amused smile tweaked him faintly. “You giddy adolescent ass!” he accused himself as she walked away, but he had to grin. Goddamn, he didn’t know when he’d been so wildly high!

  When Marcella came back in, she was with Ralph Himebaugh! Miller almost laughed aloud. What a night! Himebaugh! Ralph didn’t see him at first, kept his coat on, fur cap in hand, peered anxiously into the shadowed corners, blinked, twisted his cap, man being chased, nodded at old Antonio in the chair, who of course ignored the newest intruder as he had ignored them all, bumped into Marcella who had paused, squinted at the television as though seeking a clue there, eyes flicked across Miller, frowned toward the lighted dining room and its noises, whipped back on Miller, and he stopped dead in his tracks. “Evening, Ralph,” said Miller, smiling.

  “My God!” stammered Ralph. “M-Miller, you—? Is that—? What—My heavens, what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, Ralph. It’s not certain. Step in and have some cake.” Couldn’t hold back the grin, flowed all over his goddamn face; hoped it looked like welcome only.

  Himebaugh finally summoned the will to take another step, squinted anxiously over his shoulder once more at the old man, then again at Miller, hurried on at last into the dining room, still twisting hell out of his cap. Miller hoped Marcella would linger behind, but of course she didn’t, so he picked up his cup from the floor and followed them in. What the hell, he reasoned, there would be time now. Don’t push it.

  Himebaugh was introduced to all present and, in snatches, to the general purpose of the congregation. He seemed dazed, eyes dilated still from the dark walk over, ears bright red from the cold, flabby old lips moving foolishly, unable to understand the whirl around him. A lot of commotion, as a matter of fact, in spite of the group’s professed caution. Miller didn’t quite understand it himself. Ralph stammered something inanely aimless about a will, finally blurted out he had come to see Bruno, a personal, that is to say, only a routine visit, in order to discuss his, er, his, let us say, press releases (hopeful glance at Miller), how’s that? Vision? Yes, his vision, and chose tonight by merest accident, well, not by merest accident, but he had had no idea, none at all, that there would be, that so many people, that is to say, and he almost turned back because of the snowstorm. He removed his coat, gave it to Marcella without even observing who took it, unlocked the fur cap from his hands and thrust that at her, too. She left the room with them. Himebaugh accepted a cup of coffee, turned down the cake.

  Miller turned to pursue Marcella into the privacy of the hallway, but Eleanor Norton intercepted him. Her face had paled, her eyes were pinched from below with anxiety, a kind of horror or foreboding. Perspiration on her forehead. Miller assumed concern. Clara Collins loomed, alarmed, at their side. Mrs. Norton looked up at the two of them, first at one, then at the other. “Don’t you see?” she whispered. “He is the twelfth! The circle is complete!” And she moved away again, spreading the word.

  An uneasy silence sank into the room. Himebaugh plunked three or four spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee, stirred, spoon scraping the china. His hands trembled. Everyone watched. He glanced around anxiously at all the eyes as he
sipped the coffee, his dark shaggy eyebrows arched up at the middle, asking What? What? his eyes popping with shock. Since a boy in school, Miller had known the old guy but had never seen him in this light. And in this snowstorm, with nothing to go on—Alongside Miller, Clara Collins, breathing noisily, clenched and unclenched her fists.

  “Perhaps,” announced Eleanor Norton ominously, “we should return to Mr. Bruno’s room.”